Somewhere
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Ireland, 1920. An unfortunate incident forces Erik to run, but everywhere he goes there are people who appreciate his situation, and who will help him get messages to Nadir in Dublin.


**A/N: Written for a prompt from bogglebabbles - things you said when we were on top of the world - that I couldn't help turning into an Irish War of Independence AU**

**Mick is, of course, Michael Collins. And Dev is Eamonn de Valera**

* * *

It is three months since he saw Nadir. Due to some unfortunate business (an RUC officer, his lady wife) he was forced to run, elevated to number two most wanted man behind Mick himself. Flattering to think he could beat out Boland and Dev and the others, but Dublin was too hot for him and Mick had matters under control.

Besides, they needed a man in the West.

He cycled by night, hid by day, took all the backroads. With two revolvers and hardly enough bullets for both, a volume of Shelley in one pocket and Plunkett in the other, and barely a few pound for grub. But in every town there's at least one person who'll hide a man the Brits want, and farmers have outhouses even if their sympathies swing the other way.

An incident in Granard (a tank and some Tans) leave him without the bike. He borrows a horse and makes it to Castlebar, sends the horse back through a chain of reliables.

In Castlebar there's a girl with the voice of an angel. Fiancé killed in France, fighting for the Brits for the lie of Home Rule (son and brother of Papal Dukes, not the oppressor's titles), and her feeling toward that army soured completely. She runs a boardinghouse, a halfway house for people like him, people who need to hide and give directions, and the Duke who might have been her brother-in-law has connections to help his sort of people.

She sends him to the mountains with a cattleman on market day, loaded down with bread and cheese and things that will keep. The cattleman's got a boy who takes messages into the towns for him, and gathers reliable men for dirty jobs.

A Flying Squad, like Mick has in Dublin. Herding sheep and cattle by day, covering their faces at night. There is always the bog for them to run to.

Mayo is half bogland anyway, what isn't mountain and scrub, good land measured by the yard.

He sends a note with one of them, calling himself Adonais, all the way up to Dublin to Nadir, codenamed Shah though it was only his father that was Persian. His mother was fullblooded Irish, but no one would ever believe his middle name is Pádraig.

The message comes back slipped in with groceries from the girl in Castlebar, that Nadir will get to him as soon as he can.

He could skip for America but it's damn hard to drive the Brits out from across the Atlantic.

He reads Shelley and Plunkett a hundred times each, and between jobs dreams of execution-morning weddings, and drowning in Italian seas.

A meeting with the Duke gains him fresh ammunition, and as he looks into the eyes of a man whose brother died for something that couldn't be, he knows that the West is the place he needs to be.

It is August, the heather blooming purple, the bog smouldering turf in the air. Christine sends him whiskey with the note that Nadir will be with him in two days.

He organizes a raid on a barracks in Balla, almost gets himself killed carrying it out. The bullet tears through the muscle of his arm. Christine patches it and when he's half-weak with bloodloss, Philip has his boys help him back to the sheep herder's hut in the mountains.

He reads Shelley and washes the blood away and makes himself presentable. There were shaving things in the last pack of goods, alongside the whiskey.

He suspects Christine appreciates more than he has told her.

He can hardly sit for thinking of Nadir coming, picking his way over the mountain.

It is a full moon.

(Never start a journey on a Sunday or a full moon, and tonight is one of them but Nadir is finishing a journey, not starting.)

He sees the horse first, a dark bay. Then the moonlight bathes Nadir's face and he is wearing something that might almost be a suit. Trust Nadir to run to the mountains well dressed.

Erik laughs into the darkness, the ache in his heart light.

"You look like a gangster!" If gangsters rode horses through the mountains of Mayo.

Nadir's laugh is high and beautiful beneath the stars. "You look like a ghost!"

His voice is just as Erik remembers it, and his heart thuds with feeling, with relief, with love.

Nadir slides off the horse and ties him to a tree, and comes to him through the silver light falling to earth, stars shining in his eyes.

Erik's arms are ready, and waiting.

("You're well?" "Better now with you here.")

Their kisses are soft, and secret, and safe.

Tomorrow there will be work to do, but tonight is theirs, and theirs alone.


End file.
